"Interrupting, the Human: Suffering"
Maurits van Bever Donker, Associate Professor, University of the Western Cape
Research Manager, Centre for Humanities Research, Cape Town, South Africa
Public Lecture: 4-6pm (EST), Thursday September 7, Wilson Hall 142
Reception to Follow
Event Sponsored by the IHGC Reading Lab and Department of English, University of Virginia
The human functions as a ground for the articulation of, and claims to, particular rights. It is the human that claims freedom, and it is in the name of the human that the limits of these claims are also set out. As such, the paper offers “reading,” specifically a form of slow reading named as “shuffling,” which is gleaned from different scenes – among them the preambles and post-ambles of founding texts in South Africa’s transition from apartheid, and Biko’s trial – each of which add a new aspect to the “shuffle” by which a reading happens, as a method for exodus.
Maurits van Bever Donker is Associate Professor at University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa, and Research Manager for the Centre for Humanities Research. He specializes in Black Consciousness Philosophy, Postcolonial Theory and Aesthetics, African Philosophy and Literatures, and Contemporary South African and African History. He is the co-Principal Investigator for a project on “Renewing the Archives at University of Western Cape” and a lead researcher on two additional projects, “Communicating the Humanities” and “Desiring the Post-Apartheid. At the Centre for Humanities Research, he convenes the Centre’s fellowship program, which aims to develop the next generation of university educators in Africa. His current book projects areTexturing Difference: Black Consciousness Philosophy and the Script of Man as well as Technically Human.
